Superalloys based on nickel are widely used in gas turbine engines, spacecraft engines, and other engines and machines which operate at high temperatures and stress levels. Castings made from such superalloys must have, as a minimum, two important properties: mechanical strength and resistance to oxidation at high temperatures. Unfortunately, the optimization of one property is often at the expense of the other. The highest strength superalloys do not have the best resistance to oxidation, and the most oxidation resistant superalloys do not have the best strength levels.
Efforts by researchers in the superalloy field have identified compositions which have the potential of providing a very good combination of strength and oxidation resistance. Cast components having such compositions include critical amounts of aluminum and/or titanium as well as oxygen active elements such as yttrium and hafnium. However, research to date has not been entirely successful in identifying cost effective means for reproduceably retaining the needed amounts of oxygen active elements in the casting.
The oxygen active element yttrium has long been used in coatings and more recently in structural alloys to improve oxidation behavior, but the method by which it improved oxidation resistance was not fully understood. Researchers have recently learned that yttrium produces its beneficial effect by immobilizing the sulfur which is inevitably present in the casting as an impurity. Free or mobile sulfur degrades an article's oxidation resistance by weakening the adherence of the protective oxide film which forms on the article's surface at high temperatures. Unfortunately, the known means for controlling the level of sulfur in superalloy castings such as those described in DeCrescente et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,895,201, have been found to generally be expensive and difficult to implement in industry.
Accordingly, what is needed in the superalloy field are low sulfur superalloy articles which exhibit good mechanical strength, and relatively inexpensive and easily implemented methods for making them.